U.S. Pat. No. 3,930,392 illustrated a machine to straighten a flanged stemmed workpiece such as a poppet valve. This utilized a rotary machine to deflect the flanged head and straighten the stem. More recently a need has arisen to not only straighten elongated workpieces which have a round cross-section, such as poppet valves, but also to test them to test a welded area between the head and the stem. This welded area is breakable if the weld is imperfect. A previously used method to test the welded poppet valves was to chuck each one individually in a lathe, rotate the workpiece and then deflect the valve head by pressure near the head to see if the welded joint would break. The bent workpiece was then unchucked and placed in a separate straightening machine to straighten the stem and bent head of the poppet valve.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,037,447 illustrates a straightening machine operating on the planetary principle and is used to straighten elongated workpieces which have a round cross-section.
The difficulty with the aforementioned patented structures is that they perform only a straightening operation. The difficulty with the testing of the welded poppet valves was that it required two separate machining set-ups and separate feeding to two different machines to effect, first, the testing of the weld joint and, secondly, the straightening of the bent workpiece.
Accordingly, the problem to be solved is how to construct a more efficient testing and straightening machine which combines into one machine both the testing function and the subsequent straightening function.